4-6-98
CIVIL ACTION PROVISIONS OF McCAIN BILL ENSHRINE SCIENTIFIC FRAUD
The McCain Committee has named the "tobacco-related disease" declarations of the Centers for Disease Control, and of obsolete and grossly defective Surgeon General reports from 1989 and earlier, as official bases of action against the tobacco industry. It enshrines anti-smoker scientific fraud, as if nothing has happened in science in the last ten years!
In fact, recent advances have exposed the specific means by which the anti-smokers have exploited smokers' relative socioeconomic disadvantages, to falsely blame smoking for a host of diseases.
Specifically, infections such as Helicobacter pylori, Chlamydia pneumoniae and others are now known to cause cardiovascular disease. Helicobacter pylori is also now known to cause ulcers and stomach cancer. Human papillomavirus is now known to cause cervical cancer. Chlamydia trachomatis is the single largest risk factor yet found for asthma. Furthermore, the anti-smokers have deliberately performed defective studies for 40 years, to falsely blame smoking for perinatal illness that was really caused by chorioamnionitis. And further evidence of anti-smoker scientific fraud continues to mount.
Nowhere in the CDC or SG reports on smoking are these scientific issues addressed. These are insider jobs by biased ideologues, not honest scientists. It was the responsibility of the Commerce Committee to protect the interests of the American people by questioning their acts of fraud and omission, and to clean out their corruption.
The Commerce Committee has refused to do so, just as it has refused to question the gigantic Big Lie that smoking is an economic burden, and the same way this Committee has refused to allow any representation for those who would be most affected by these laws, namely smokers.
The Committee's high-handed actions confirm the impression that these tobacco hearings are nothing but a fraud and a lynching. They show that Congress doesn't give a damn about the grievances of the people. They show that Congress considers itself accountable to nobody but the anti-smokers and their media accomplices, who ought to be the targets of federal prosecution!
TITLE VII_CIVIL LIABILITY OF MANUFACTURERS OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS.
Staff Working Draft, March 31, 1998.
SEC. 705. CONCURRENT JURISDICTION; FEDERAL CAUSE OF ACTION; ACTIONS;
DAMAGES;LIABILITY; REMOVAL.
(e) Liability ._The following provisions regarding liability shall apply in
civil actions to which this title applies:
(5) In any civil action brought involving a tobacco claim, there shall be a
presumption that nicotine is addictive and that the diseases identified as
being caused by use of tobacco products in the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking: 25 Years of Progress:
A Report of the Surgeon General (United States Public Health Service 1989),
The Health Consequences of Smoking: Involuntary Smoking, (USPHS 1986); and
The Health Consequences of Using Smokeless Tobacco, (USPHS 1986), are caused
in whole or in part by the use of tobacco products, (``general causation
presumption''), and a jury empaneled to hear a tobacco claim shall be so
instructed. In all other respects, the burden of proof as to the issue of
whether a plaintiff's specific disease or injury was caused by smoking shall
be governed by the law of the State or Tribe in which the tobacco claim was
brought. This general causation presumption shall in no way affect the
ability of the defendant to introduce evidence or argument which the defendant
would otherwise be entitled to present under the law of the State or Tribe in
which the tobacco claim was brought to rebut the general causation
presumption, or with respect to general causation, specific causation, or
alternative causation, or to introduce any other evidence or argument which
the defendant would otherwise be entitled to make.
Courtesy of Carol Thompson
Smokers' Rights Action Group
P.O. Box 259575
Madison, WI 53725-9575
Phone: 608-249-4568
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